Cisco ASA vs. pfSense

Cisco ASA is ranked 2nd in Firewalls with 75 reviews vs pfSense which is ranked 4th in Firewalls with 24 reviews. The top reviewer of Cisco ASA writes "Syslog generation and forwarding are good but it lacks many UTM features". The top reviewer of pfSense writes "It allows for both v1 and v2 IPSec configurations to secure your connections". Cisco ASA is most compared with Fortinet FortiGate, Palo Alto Networks WildFire and Juniper SRX. pfSense is most compared with Sophos UTM, Fortinet FortiGate and Cisco ASA. See our Cisco ASA vs. pfSense report.

Quotes From Members Comparing Cisco ASA vs. pfSense

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

It protects our network.The stability of the product is good.Cisco ASA is very strong.It is a secure product.It is scalable and stable.At this point, we find that this product has high productivity and high availability and there is no need for improvement.It is a highly stable product. We rarely receive any serious outdates, so it works quite well.The IPS (In-plane switching) is the most valuable feature.

Super easy to manage. Anyone who has been working with firewalls can handle it.There is good documentation with a fantastic community and enterprise support.The ability to perform packet captures on the command line and via the GUI is useful for diagnosing problems.It is easy to manage. I don't have to have highly trained engineers. A mid-level employee who is conversant with firewalls can take care of managing it.The IPsec and VPN services, as well as the interoperability with other solutions such as Cisco, Juniper, and Palo Alto have been invaluable.Stability has been excellent. We have experienced no issues; it never fails.Its features rival many of the high cost solutions out there.The initial setup was straightforward, therefore I wanted to continue using the product.

The pricing is a bit high.Migration with other appliances is not easy. It has to be done manually, and this takes a long time.It is not easy to configure.The scalability is a bit limiting, to be honest. In terms of when you look to changing landscape in terms of threats, I think to me, my personal it's a bit limiting.Tech support could not answer all of our questions. I had to do research on the web to solve my issues.<p>If there is old hardware, or appliances, it does not necessarily work with the new Cisco generation firewalls.At times the product is sluggish and slowMore intuitive support for SIP services are needed. This took a long time to configure properly for the user.

It needs better parsing of logs. At the moment, you have to use an external server for this if you want a deeper analysis.I would like to see multiple DNS servers running on individual interfaces.They need to take care of a few issues with the GUI. Occasionally, they don't update the configurations properly. I would also like them to firm up the VPN aspect of the software a bit and provide better monitoring software.When a carrier that supports a VPN or IPsec tunnel bounces, the recovery time can take a few minutes. Reducing that time would be greatly appreciated in future releases.It is not centrally managed, where you log into the website and can see all your services there. We would like to be able to see is all the configurations from a central interface on all our pfSenses.The GUI could use improvements, though it is manageable.A malware blocker should be included. I do not know if it is included yet. However, until now, we have not experienced a large malware invasion.It requires more attention to provide a better alternative for open source to small government or educational institutions with reduced budgets in terms of technology.

The cost is a bit high compared to other solutions in the market.Cisco recently has become very expensive.The cost is a bit higher than other competitive solutions on the market.It is considered on the "high end" of the spectrum.The cost of keeping the licensing up on the ASA is very expensive. It has a lot of positives, but the cost of going with it is really starting to be a major negative right now.Commercial leasing is the best option.ASA pricing seems high compared to other firewalls, such as the Sophos XG models.The licensing features are getting more complicated. These should be simplified.

All costs are low compared to other solutions. ﻿The hardware is stable and cheap.There is no licensing fee except for the enterprise support, if you want it.This solution was about $150,000 cheaper than the closest competitor over a three year period.In comparison to a lot of other solutions, it's very inexpensive.It is a great solution that is economical. It scales so the cost per protected MB is almost free.It is a free solution.It is economical (i.e., free).From Sonic Wall, their price is much higher, because for every feature that you want to add, you have to pay. ﻿﻿I can do the same things with pfSense, but everything is included in one price.

Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) is Cisco's end-to-end software solution and core operating system that powers the Cisco ASA product series. This software solution provides enterprise-level firewall capabilities for all types of ASA products, including blades, standalone appliances and virtual devices. Adaptive Security Appliance provides protection to organizations of all sizes, and allows end-users to access information securely anywhere, at any time, and through any device.

Adaptive Security Appliance is also fully compatible with other key security technologies, and so provides organizations with an all-encompassing security solution.

Providing comprehensive network security solutions for the enterprise, large business and SOHO, pfSense solutions bring together the most advanced technology available to make protecting your network easier than ever before. Our products are built on the most reliable platforms and are engineered to provide the highest levels of performance, stability and confidence.

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